IRC log for #brlcad on 20090328

00:04.50 Ralith pokes jonored
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00:51.40 ``Erik eeks, take that somewhere private, ralith O.O
00:52.20 Ralith prude.
01:09.55 Ralith discovers that all the pkgconfig files appear to be broken.
01:09.59 Ralith does something about this.
01:11.14 CIA-40 BRL-CAD: 03ralith * r34099 10/brlcad/trunk/misc/pkgconfig/ (13 files): Fixed fatal dependent variable mis-ordering
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01:40.48 kanzure Hi all. Has anyone any experience with elmerfem?
02:03.47 Ralith dear god it's hard to get RBGui to build
02:34.53 Ralith rewrites most of g3d's build system
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03:20.39 CIA-40 BRL-CAD: 03ralith * r34100 10/rt^3/trunk/src/g3d/ (10 files in 2 dirs): Extensive build system cleanup/reliability fixes: BRL-CAD is now correctly autodetected, reliability of all other dependency detection has vastly improved.
03:21.37 *** join/#brlcad Ralith (n=ralith@216.162.199.202)
03:24.30 Ralith brlcad: do you know if mafm's returning this year to GSoC on the GUI?
03:27.50 Ralith also, seems to work fine(ish) on OGRE 1.6.1
03:28.06 Ralith the build system's largely Done Right now :]
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04:27.32 brlcad Ralith: actually I don't know -- he's had personal matters to take care of, he may not
04:27.55 brlcad glad to hear it worked ;)
04:29.41 Ralith I think I'll apply for that, then
04:29.50 Ralith seeing as I've some degree of familiarity with it
04:33.48 brlcad feel free to mail him or the mailing list to check up with him
04:34.25 brlcad it would be nice to see someone continue making progress
04:57.55 Ralith yeah, I'm looking forward to having it hooked up and doing things
04:58.30 Ralith I'll see if I can get in touch with him, and get my app started in the meantime
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06:01.42 brlcad Ralith: if you do apply for a previous gsoc project, please try to also put forward another application for one of the other ideas as well
06:01.57 brlcad that goes for anyone and any previous gsoc project
06:03.55 brlcad it often happens that some of the most desirable students all put in for the same project, rejecting several desirable students that would have otherwise been selected for a different project
06:04.40 brlcad course that's only if someone can put together two *good* applications, and the second one doesn't decrease the quality of the first one! if you just have time for one, then so be it
06:05.18 brlcad also an even better reason to submit it earlier rather than later so we can give feedback and gauge whether there are conflicts
06:06.32 Ralith there're multiple people going for that one?
06:07.30 Ralith I'm certainly happy to apply to another, though; I'm quite interested in getting in on GSoC, so anything that increases my chances...
06:07.48 Ralith not to mention this is a fun project.
06:08.06 brlcad there usually are three or four projects that get several submissions each by the deadline
06:08.45 brlcad last year, there were about 20 valid interesting applications, about 10 of those were very good, from there we narrowed down on 4
06:08.57 Ralith while you're around; do you remember if there was any reason g3d is using RBGui rather than something more active?
06:09.02 Ralith the project's outright abandoned these days.
06:09.29 Ralith says as much on the site, and it took me half an hour of hacking to make it and its dependent lib build, including writing a build system for it.
06:09.45 brlcad yeah, there was a long long series of discussions about a gui framework
06:10.46 Ralith so, preferable to adopt RBGui over switching it out?
06:10.59 brlcad rbgui being dead was one of its downsides, but wasn't seen as a huge one iff it did everything that was needed (and it had several very interesting extension aspects) -- it was on par with two or so others iirc, and it came down to just running with any one of them
06:11.12 brlcad no, not tied to rbgui
06:11.51 brlcad it was just to move past dwelling on it since there were so many questions about it vs others that really couldn't be answered without just trying it out
06:12.33 Ralith hm. I'd imagined there must have been some compelling reason to work off of a dead project.
06:12.52 brlcad if it can be made to work, great -- I highly suspect we will end up with a lot of customized widgets and interactions as it starts coming to demo-state
06:13.31 brlcad Ralith: have you seen their demo?
06:13.36 Ralith I don't think so
06:14.08 brlcad some of the previous discussion, fwiw -- http://brlcad.org/wiki/Talk:OpenGL_GUI_Framework
06:14.10 Ralith I'll admit that when brought to a working state it doesn't look half bad in g3d
06:14.36 Ralith quite modern.
06:14.50 brlcad http://rightbraingames.com/Gui.wmv
06:15.16 Ralith pulls it down
06:16.23 *** part/#brlcad jdoliner (n=jdoliner@c-68-51-76-57.hsd1.il.comcast.net)
06:19.00 Ralith ...that is *very* aesthetically appealing
06:19.43 Ralith put even a reasonably usable editor behind that and we'd probably get quite the spike in users out of ooh-shiny factor alone.
06:19.57 brlcad nods
06:20.20 brlcad the basic skinny about cegui (which I love in concept, btw), is that it doesn't/didn't yet have vector gui elements, and some widgets are missing
06:21.06 Ralith anything really that hard to add?
06:21.09 Ralith oo, those spline widgets are neat
06:21.39 brlcad yeah, it would be -- cegui is based around a markup description layer similar to html
06:21.53 Ralith that extensively? I thought that was just for layout.
06:21.55 brlcad so window decorations and borders are all themed using images
06:22.22 Ralith do you know how extensive RBGui's vector support is?
06:22.41 brlcad have talked to a couple of the devs that work on it before -- they plan to add it at some point, just will take a lot of api changes
06:22.49 brlcad nope
06:22.54 Ralith kk
06:23.09 brlcad yeah, isn't to say that rbgui solves that problem
06:23.11 Ralith first glance suggests just fills and gradients, but I haven't looked at the code yet, and those cover most practical use cases anyway I guess
06:23.11 brlcad either
06:23.21 brlcad more just what came up about cegui
06:24.01 brlcad yeah, it's a simple enough library that the assertion was it can probably do just about everything we need it for in the immediate future regardless
06:24.26 brlcad as could a couple others, and if we had to live with maintaining rbgui or one of the others, so be it
06:24.26 Ralith well, you've talked me into agreement with the decision.
06:24.45 Ralith as you say, considering the amount of customization we're ultimately likely to apply to anything, that's not unreasonable.
06:25.05 brlcad still better than rolling our own :0
06:25.18 Ralith indeed.
06:25.30 brlcad now another option that came up just in the last year
06:25.46 brlcad that was previously a non-starter due to licensing.. qt
06:26.05 brlcad could see someone trying out a qt+ogre swap out
06:26.12 Ralith qt has bad licensing?
06:26.19 Ralith I thought it was LGPL
06:26.28 brlcad that just happened this year
06:26.31 Ralith ah, right
06:26.58 Ralith well, I dunno. Qt can't render inside an OpenGL context, can it?
06:27.29 brlcad hm, I don't know -- would be a little surprised if it couldn't
06:27.32 Ralith if that's correct, that limits our freedom in design significantly.
06:27.33 Ralith really?
06:28.02 Ralith I'd be surprised if it did; maybe I have a misconception of it, but it seems wholly targeted at, uh
06:28.05 Ralith not sure what the term is
06:28.06 Ralith normal apps?
06:29.25 Ralith I wouldn't expect gtk to render within a OpenGL context, either.
06:29.29 Ralith never seen them used that way, certainly
06:29.54 Ralith every Qt/gtk opengl app I've seen always just had an embedded context, with the GUI surrounding it.
06:30.17 Ralith not that that doesn't have a history of working perfectly well, but I like the possibilities offered by having them render to the same place.
06:30.26 brlcad nods
06:30.36 Ralith not to mention the plain visual appeal of all the neat fading, smooth movement, etc. that RBGui implements and that can't be reliably done otherwise.
06:30.41 brlcad certainly can say definitely without some research/testing
06:30.47 Ralith yeah
06:31.35 brlcad rbgui gets away with it simply by rendering everything itself, which has the cost of lost native look and feel (which is a good and bad thing!)
06:31.57 brlcad i don't mind not looking native if it looks really good, and it should
06:32.01 Ralith I'm not sure anyone expects a modeling app to have native look and feel thesedays.
06:32.10 Ralith or maybe that's just graphics apps.
06:32.42 brlcad yeah, modeling is a lot like the gaming industry in that regard where custom guis are more the norm than the exception
06:33.00 Ralith and beyond that, native look and feel is only an element on OSX/Windows
06:33.07 brlcad http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/opengl.html seems to indicate it's like any other widget
06:33.17 brlcad implying it could be layered as needed
06:33.26 Ralith it's nigh-impossible to guarantee an app fits in well on a *nix environment.
06:33.37 Ralith oh, I didn't know Qt had capacity for that kind of layering.
06:33.41 Ralith I guess it would make sense.
06:34.09 Ralith would be an odd omission for something so large and widely used
06:35.04 brlcad Ralith: you've seen the IOE video, yes?
06:35.08 Ralith yup
06:35.13 brlcad okay, great
06:35.14 Ralith it was quite a while back though
06:35.42 Ralith it struck me as very unique
06:35.50 brlcad that pretty much surveys the basic look, feel, and interaction direction I'd like to start with
06:35.54 Ralith have a link for it? I should probably review it.
06:36.04 brlcad brlcad.org/design/gui
06:36.10 Ralith hehe
06:36.28 Ralith _final or _full?
06:38.30 brlcad final I believe
06:39.05 brlcad interesting qt interface with opengl contexts, http://www.qtsoftware.com/images/customers/coolapps/realflow4.jpg
06:39.33 Ralith that looks about like what I'd expect
06:39.45 Ralith blender-style UIs have always felt a lot more integrated to me, tbh
06:39.48 brlcad yeah
06:42.01 brlcad a little better, http://chaos.troll.no/%7Egunnar/jambi_image_viewer.jpg
06:42.40 brlcad it's faked, though ;)
06:42.47 brlcad rather, it's just an image
06:42.54 Ralith yeah, looked that way
06:43.01 Ralith (I can tell because of the pixels and etc)
06:43.25 Ralith that and the inconsistent widgets.
06:43.51 Ralith ...and the "Image Viewer" in the title.
06:44.25 Ralith I suppose I like the idea of sticking with RBGui, then, and extending it to fit our needs; might well even be easier than adapting a more fully-realized lib.
06:44.32 brlcad here's what I was looking for
06:44.52 brlcad more in line, http://stellarium.org/img/screenshots/0.10-stel_gui.jpg
06:45.06 Ralith ...that's Qt?>
06:45.09 brlcad yep
06:45.12 Ralith wow.
06:45.17 Ralith because that doesn't look like Qt at all.
06:45.20 Ralith that looks fully integrated.
06:45.26 Ralith I wonder how hard it was for them to do that.
06:45.56 brlcad yeah, qt's various classes (QtButton, etc) can have their display method overridden in various ways
06:45.59 Ralith still probably can't offer the more 'fun' visual effects, but that's pretty impressive.
06:46.16 brlcad basically allowing custom widget look and feel
06:46.40 brlcad while still providing all the same "basic widgets" that you want like tabs, sliders, scrollers, textareas, etc
06:47.24 brlcad yeah, don't know how hard in practice that is, just have seem several projects customize their qt gui that way
06:47.38 brlcad if we ended up with something like that, I'd be content to live with qt ;)
06:47.40 Ralith example code in abundance, then.
06:47.56 brlcad or rbgui, or whatever, means to an end
06:48.33 Ralith is inclined to favor the status quo for now, in the absence of any compelling reason to switch.
06:49.15 Ralith reminds me, I recall reading on the Ogre forums a while back of someone working on a GPU backend for Cairo
06:56.42 Ralith http://github.com/akyrtzi/cairo-gral/tree/master
06:56.45 Ralith may be of interest.
06:57.45 brlcad wow, stellarium gui is really impressive
06:58.42 Ralith installs
06:58.48 Ralith what's caught your eye with it?
06:59.17 brlcad it's very neatly integrated
07:00.32 brlcad translucent overlay windows, persistent menus, an info bar, a persistent info overlay, drawer menus, clean window/full-screen support
07:03.01 Ralith hm. I wonder what license they use, and how easily torn out their GUI code is.
07:03.41 brlcad gpl
07:03.49 Ralith ah.
07:03.56 Ralith that would be a problem, then, right?
07:04.00 Ralith as far as taking directly.
07:04.08 brlcad to use their code direclty, yes
07:04.20 Ralith gaaah
07:04.24 Ralith something on my system hates xinerama
07:04.36 Ralith my mouse keeps dying >:|
07:04.53 Ralith anyway.
07:04.57 Ralith Qt's an awfully big dependency.
07:05.11 brlcad intersting that they have many of the same widgets as ioe, just in different places, slightly different behaviors
07:06.38 Ralith brb, need to restart X
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07:08.51 brlcad yes, it is a big dep. if it did exactly what we needed, though, I'd certainly live with that over anything else that didn't give us a crisp beautiful gui
07:09.05 brlcad if we could get that gui with something else, something smaller, even better
07:11.20 Ralith for all its size, does Qt actually offer much relevant to us that RBGui doesn't?
07:16.01 brlcad that's hard to say without doing an evaluation
07:16.27 brlcad laying out some of the basic requirements and features and directly doing a comparison
07:16.49 brlcad or just dropping the code in and giving it a go to see how it works
07:18.00 brlcad the glitzy things that make stellarium very compelling are not exactly provided by qt directly either, so it's really just a matter of widgets and extensibility
07:18.23 Ralith nods
07:18.36 Ralith examines the RBGui widget implementations
07:19.41 brlcad rbgui is so simple that my initial reaction last year was that we could probably gut and extend rbgui to do what we needed with a minimal amount of effort (no less than most frameworks), at least to get to an end state that looks and feels like IOE
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07:21.52 brlcad where rbgui will fail is if we need native look and feel, native widget support and the bells and whistles that come with native widgets (like pervasive spell-checking, copy paste support, shortcut navigation and selection keybindings, etc)
07:22.51 Ralith copy/paste support should at the very least be trivial to tack on.
07:23.01 Ralith at least in X
07:23.02 brlcad each feature individually is trivial
07:23.15 brlcad there are just about a hundred of them :)
07:23.18 Ralith point.
07:24.09 Ralith and Qt is very, very well supported.
07:24.38 Ralith and documented, and ported, and maintained, and...
07:24.46 brlcad and big ;)
07:25.01 Ralith the counterpoint to that is that most users will have it anyway.
07:25.11 brlcad but yeah, it'd be a non-issue otherwise
07:25.19 brlcad as it pretty much just works
07:25.50 Ralith it certainly has its attractions.
07:26.51 brlcad so that could be a gsoc project in itself
07:27.03 brlcad make [insert toolkit here] work
07:27.30 Ralith not nearly as fun as getting g3d able to actually interact with some geometry, though.
07:27.32 brlcad taking it all the way to matching most of the look and feel intended with customizations
07:27.45 brlcad true
07:28.00 brlcad but the latter is also complicated by the fact that the backend is a rapidly moving target
07:28.19 brlcad there's the libged library (which it presently hooks to)
07:28.35 brlcad and which will give it most of mged's command-line functionality
07:29.13 brlcad and there's also the new geometry engine, which is ready for basic geometry management but not for a full-blown editor just yet (not this summer)
07:29.46 brlcad and there's the geometry service, which is what it should ultimately be using but is even farther still away from completion
07:30.07 Ralith so, time might be best spent on the frontend?
07:30.33 brlcad probably, that's the one piece that can be worked on in relative isolation
07:30.59 Ralith alright.
07:31.10 brlcad or working entirely on the backend, working on one of those three, but then there's not much to see
07:31.34 brlcad doing just a little of the front and little of the back would be a bit of a mess I think
07:31.34 Ralith and a lot more familiarity with BRL-CAD required, no?
07:32.20 brlcad depends, for GE yes, for GS slightly less so, for GED not really (it's mostly refactoring and api cleanup now, almost done)
07:33.16 Ralith I think my real reservation about Qt is not so much its raw size as that it tries to be an entire application framework rather than just a GUI.
07:33.24 Ralith that said, I suppose this is not necessarily a bad thing.
07:33.33 brlcad that is true
07:33.54 Ralith if it's good at what it does--which I don't know--that might make things a lot easier.
07:35.07 brlcad it would be a gsoc-sized project to convert existing rbgui portion over to qt, i'm sure there's refactoring that would need to happen along the way
07:35.46 Ralith I'm not sure it wouldn't be easier to start mostly from scratch
07:35.59 Ralith considering that even an interface to Ogre is missing
07:36.40 brlcad hm, I wouldn't like that -- there's a lot of good effort invested already
07:36.55 Ralith that's my feeling too.
07:36.55 brlcad things like various mouse interaction modes for example
07:37.27 brlcad I'd rather see it evolve that be replaced, even if it feels like it's a slower path
07:37.33 Ralith it's hard to say how much of it would survive such a major switch
07:38.08 Ralith but, I certainly see your point, and I'm sure such an approach is not infeasible.
07:38.29 brlcad perfectly valid to evolve into something completely new
07:40.16 brlcad but that would be determined by doing the work and seeing the incremental steps it needs to take to get there
07:40.39 Ralith yeah.
07:42.16 brlcad another good gsoc project.. de-tcl'fying the core libraries (libbu, libbn, libwdb, librt, libged)
07:42.24 Ralith there's TCL in those? O.o
07:42.25 brlcad that's a big refactoring task
07:42.47 Ralith what's it doing there?
07:42.48 brlcad the C api of tcl
07:43.11 brlcad tcl actually has a very nice C library
07:43.23 Ralith huh?
07:43.33 Ralith maybe I just need to look at the code
07:44.39 brlcad tcl provides a slew of basic utility classes and callback mechansisms that slowly integrated into the libs over two decades
07:45.13 brlcad things like hash tables, appending results to strings, and evaluating callbacks
07:46.09 Ralith so, move implementations of all that into libbu?
07:46.10 brlcad that aspect of tcl is actually very nice, but for simple containment reasons, I'm reverting a decision that was made about 15 years ago to allow tcl to mix in with core code
07:46.50 brlcad yeah, some things we have implementations for, other things would need some basic support added or alternatives found
07:47.31 Ralith sounds fairly straightforward.
07:48.01 Ralith if involved.
07:48.30 brlcad it is, it's just a lot of work
07:48.48 brlcad probably would end up refactoring somewhere around ...
07:48.59 brlcad does a quick line count check for tcl'isms
07:51.41 brlcad so at a minimum, that is refactoring about 4000 lines of code
07:54.10 Ralith refactor linecounts can be misleading
07:54.32 Ralith considering how much can be done with careful application of regular expressions.
07:54.46 brlcad also includes about 200 functions apparently .. so expand that out to all callers and you're probably looking at 20k or so
07:55.51 brlcad you could do a few things with regexps, but it'll still be a little tedious
07:56.38 Ralith well, sure.
07:56.47 brlcad most of it won't just be a function change though, it'll be a different interface and there will be a hundred files that have to be hand-edited because of all the different styles of use
07:57.40 brlcad plus given this hits the grand-daddy librt library, extra care would have to be taken to verify changes don't break anything
07:58.08 Ralith at least the benchmark suite is helpful there.
07:59.07 brlcad that's just a minimum, but yeah
08:01.47 Ralith there's also plenty to be said for a very well-defined task.
08:03.05 brlcad refactoring tasks are often my favorite to work on
08:03.38 brlcad they're well defined, you usually have an exact work list that you can identify, however long and tedious it may be
08:04.11 brlcad i'll have the files in my emacs buffer and can watch the % complete increase as I make progress
08:04.52 brlcad best part is usually the "clean" feeling that usually results
08:04.59 Ralith yeah.
08:05.12 brlcad and invariably, the code is then easier for others to understand and extend with new functionality
08:05.55 brlcad seems to happen every time, gets cleaned up then someone takes it to the next level
08:11.39 Ralith reviews the gsoc paperwork
08:27.17 Ralith I should be able to get my applications in tomorrow.
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12:09.57 CIA-40 BRL-CAD: 03Homovulgaris 07http://brlcad.org * r1312 10/wiki/Libpc: /* Objectives */
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12:34.16 CIA-40 BRL-CAD: 03Homovulgaris 07http://brlcad.org * r1313 10/wiki/Libpc: /* Structure */
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14:49.05 ``Erik <PROTECTED>
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15:48.54 starseeker gapes in awe at the stellarium
15:48.59 starseeker screenshot
15:50.23 starseeker As to the point about it being GPL - that will be true for ALL code (up until QT4.5) using QT. It was a licensing requirement
15:51.01 starseeker many will probably stick with GPL, but it wouldn't hurt (if there is interest) to talk to the authors and see if they would be willing to re-license under LGPL now that they can
15:51.43 starseeker if we find a code base that is genuinely interesting in terms of wanting to drop code straight into BRL-CAD, that's certainly a reasonable first step
15:52.06 starseeker if they say no, not a big deal - we simply identify the techniques used to achieve the effect and write our own solution
15:53.22 starseeker I've never seen QT used in that way before, but seeing that it can be makes my interest in it rise by at least a factor of 2.
16:00.25 ``Erik nifty app
16:06.43 starseeker wooof. apparently my system isn't up to handling that
16:07.22 starseeker checks website for minimum hardware requirements
16:08.06 starseeker hmmmm
16:08.31 starseeker my system is much faster than that....
16:08.34 starseeker weird
16:08.51 ``Erik doing something silly like running linux on it? :D
16:09.17 starseeker uh, vice versa actually
16:09.30 ``Erik meant the system
16:09.37 starseeker heh
16:09.46 ``Erik english sucks for context sensitive statements :D
16:10.26 ``Erik hopes it has a 'light pollution' slider O.o
16:13.02 starseeker yuck: frames per second = 0.018
16:16.32 ``Erik fires it up
16:20.12 starseeker wonders if his nvidia support didn't get reset or something...
16:22.49 ``Erik hm, a light pollution selector
16:22.54 ``Erik acceptable, I suppose
16:24.16 starseeker yech. well, bzflag does it too so it's not stellarium's fault
16:24.24 starseeker starts checking nvidia driver versions
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16:25.49 starseeker oh, cute, it's using the software one. why????
16:25.53 starseeker alrightie...
16:26.05 ``Erik 50fps here :)
16:26.11 ``Erik that's a pretty nifty app
16:30.20 starseeker yep, there we go
16:30.38 starseeker in the 40 range here (after fixing acceleration)
16:30.43 starseeker that is cool
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16:32.29 ``Erik I might stick my head out tonight to look for saturn
16:39.33 ``Erik wonders why he has to put .cvsignore in his .cvsignore O.o
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17:52.59 brlcad starseeker: it's not a big deal either way, it's really not that hard to design a custom interface (even with or without qt)
17:53.41 brlcad we're talking about days or weeks of time, not months, generally speaking
17:54.35 brlcad but yeah, stellarium is one of several projects that have a really nice custom interface (there are others)
18:21.00 starseeker brlcad: Indeed. That's what inclines me more towards QT in fact - since it allows the custom part (and that wouldn't be a big deal, agreed) it gives us for free native look and feel when/if we want it, which is a lot harder and more maintainance headache
18:36.10 brlcad not quite for free, but it does make that option a little bit easier
18:37.43 brlcad starseeker: another really nice 'streamlined' but gorgeous interface to look at is one of the apple opengl source code demo applications
18:40.25 brlcad that's actually more in-line with what I would really like to see for an initial pre-release interface with single main display manaer context with some bindings, text overlays, crisp opengl with various render modes available, and an on-demand command prompt
18:41.03 brlcad alas, that demo itself is mac-specific
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18:50.34 starseeker brlcad: any movies of it?
19:18.55 brlcad starseeker: hm, no
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20:02.09 brlcad contemplates stealing a couple of the bz buttons for menu items
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22:28.08 Ralith brlcad: I find myself still wondering if the benefits of relatively easy native integration are worth the effort necessary to openglify it; blender, for example, seems to get by fine with little to no native integration.
22:28.15 Ralith (re: Qt)
22:28.59 Ralith also, do you ever sleep? :P
22:29.59 andax Ralith: opengl is not supported by all graphics cards. would there be alternatives?
22:30.19 Ralith it's not?
22:31.05 andax i remember i had a Asus AMD64 board with onboard graphics card (Chrome) which had no opengl
22:31.35 Ralith I would be very surprised if that's the case.
22:31.54 Ralith besides, anybody who expects to use a modern CAD app will need OpenGL one way or another.
22:31.58 Ralith it's the industry standard
22:35.13 Ralith that said, I believe RBGui + Ogre will allow us to run on DirectX for no extra effort
22:36.24 andax it was a via s3 unichrome pro graphics card. okay, it was a cheap office PC but i remember i had vector graphics even on our first DOS-box with a 8086 CPU and wondered why i need that opengl support from hardware side for practically all 3d applications
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22:38.44 Ralith because OpenGL is the standard.
22:39.04 Ralith ancient hardware doesn't always implement the standards; this is one of the reasons it has been superseded.
22:39.11 kanzure Hi all, does anyone know of anything capable of converting a .sldprt file that I have laying around here?
22:40.06 Ralith kanzure: from solidworks? I think you'll have to convert it to something more standard using solidworks as an intermediary first.
22:42.15 Ralith andax: you have to admit, "there used to be some hardware that didn't support it" is not a very strong argument.
22:42.21 Ralith as it could be applied to anything.
22:42.46 kanzure Ralith: I don't have solidworks.
22:42.47 andax_ Ralith: yes, but on the other hand we already had 3d graphics on this acient hardware before anyone talked about opengl. i remember f-18 flight simulation from microprose, for example :)
22:42.56 Ralith kanzure: that sounds like a problem.
22:42.57 kanzure Blah. I told these guys why they shouldn't use non-free software.
22:43.09 kanzure throws a fit
22:43.16 Ralith andax_: usually not hardware accelerated, though.
22:43.25 Ralith you can always use mged.
22:43.37 kanzure ?
22:43.43 kanzure to convert the file?
22:44.04 Ralith was talking to andax_
22:44.06 kanzure the problem is that I have a dot sldprt file, and a dot stl of the file, but the dot stl is wrong- there are some triangle errors and so on that 'netgen' is able to find though not fix
22:44.26 kanzure maybe I'll go pray to the netgen folks for "Dr. STL" to start working
22:45.08 kanzure context- here's what I've been doing today- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPY84NelFO4
22:49.30 Ralith kanzure: meshlab maybe?
22:53.08 kanzure haven't heard of it
22:53.25 Ralith it seems to be good at cleaning up that sort of thing
22:56.45 kanzure http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Compiling
22:56.49 kanzure wtf is wrong with these people? :p
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22:58.07 Ralith ?
22:58.23 kanzure guess they've never heard of dependency management and autogen
22:58.54 Ralith where do you get that idea?
22:59.02 Ralith just because they list the dependencies?
22:59.42 kanzure because I downloaded it and I have to manually compile all of these sub packages or whatever
23:00.01 Ralith or you could just, you know, install them with your package manager.
23:00.02 kanzure also, that's a non-standard way of listing dependencies
23:00.11 kanzure nope, they are not available from the package manager
23:00.12 Ralith there's a standard way?
23:00.15 kanzure I checked before I started ranting :)
23:00.18 Ralith that's your distro's fault, then
23:00.19 Ralith not theirs
23:00.31 kanzure well, most distributions have standdard ways of managing dependencies
23:00.33 kanzure not really
23:00.37 kanzure they could have just picked any standard format
23:00.46 kanzure for instance, on debian there is an 'alien' tool to convert between rpm and to deb and such
23:00.51 Ralith then they would have been unable to support the others.
23:00.56 Ralith and that's a binary release, not source.
23:01.18 kanzure recalls obtaining source packages through package managers
23:01.22 Ralith they're not responsible for making their tools available in your repository of source
23:01.26 Ralith er
23:01.27 Ralith of choice
23:01.38 Ralith that's up to whoever manages the repository
23:01.39 kanzure I guess they could make it completely unavailable
23:01.52 Ralith if you don't like it, ask whoever manages the repository to include it
23:01.59 brlcad 2yeah, same here
23:02.04 kanzure still, lack of a make file..
23:02.17 Ralith nothing big comes with makefiles
23:02.22 Ralith qmake is a build system that generates makefiles.
23:02.29 Ralith just like autotools, cmake, etc
23:02.31 kanzure so is autogen, like I mentioned :)
23:02.32 kanzure yeah
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23:02.43 Ralith there's nothing wrong with using something other than autotools
23:02.54 kanzure there's something wrong with using nothing.
23:02.58 Ralith they're using qmake
23:03.01 Ralith qmake != nothing
23:03.06 kanzure wtf? /me checks the directory again
23:03.30 Ralith brlcad: did you get my earlier comment?
23:03.32 kanzure how can you tell?
23:03.38 Ralith kanzure: because it says so in the wiki page you linked.
23:03.39 kanzure ah, there's a make file at least
23:05.33 kanzure okay, nevermind, you're right.
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23:36.32 starseeker_ hmm - is bz having trouble?
23:36.58 starseeker_ can't ssh in
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